Pisces of Fate

by Pisces of Fate (retail) (epub)

  “Of course you can stay here,” Sandy said. “He can sleep on the couch, right?” he looked at Palm, doubt rising on his face.

  “Yeah, we always have room for family,” Palm almost cackled. Ascott felt a sense of relief that Palm didn’t appear to have any plans for taking over the world. He felt sure Shoal’s mum would be a formidable evil genius.

  They spent the afternoon encouraging Tacus to draw. He didn’t cooperate, choosing instead to explore his surroundings and complain about the cold.

  “Come on, Tacus, if you draw your picture, you can have a nap wrapped up in a blanket,” Ascott pleaded.

  “Thoo cold…” Tacus moaned in a ghostly voice from the top of a curtain rail.

  Ascott gave up and left a selection of drawing paper, crayons and crackers on the table before going out on the stone balcony and staring moodily out towards the sea.

  Shoal came up beside him and swung her legs over the low wall, letting her feet dangle towards the street below. “You’re going to go back to Amoeba, aren’t you?” she said quietly.

  “I don’t have any choice. I need to find the treasure and put an end to this.”

  “Well, if you’re going to upset all the gods in the islands and then spend eternity grinding salt at the bottom of the sea, I’m going with you.”

  “Thanks, but what do we tell your parents?” Ascott looked over his shoulder but Sandy and Palm were both downstairs in the dive shop.

  “I could tell them that we’re going away for a romantic night of passion beneath the stars.” Shoal grinned at the suddenly blushing Ascott. “Or fishing.”

  “Fishing…yeah.” Ascott nodded.

  Palm insisted on packing them a picnic and extra blankets. Ascott could feel the heat radiating off his face every time she winked and grinned broadly at him, occasionally chuckling “Fishing, eh?”

  They packed Tacus in a towel. He had stopped moaning and eaten a cracker but refused to do more than thoughtfully chew on the crayons they offered him.

  Down at the port, things were livening up again. Boats were heading out for an evening’s fish and the market stall holders were doing voice exercises in anticipation of the resumption of business tomorrow.

  Ascott sat on the picnic basket, facing Shoal, with Tacus between his feet. The parrot still showed no interest in drawing anything. “You draw every day,” Ascott said. “The same thing, over and over again. Why have you stopped?”

  “Pluckerth,” Tacus squawked.

  “Maybe he’s too upset to draw,” Shoal said.

  “What’s he got to be upset about? It wasn’t his house that got burned down!”

  “Yeah it was. And he lost most of his feathers.”

  “Pluckerth!” Tacus squawked again.

  Ascott lapsed into silence as they turned south, following the winding channel through the islands. Around them the last of the whale pods swam through the channel, surfacing and blowing water into the air as they passed. Ascott watched them and embraced an unaccustomed sense of peace. Here was the natural order of things; the whales following the trails of their ancestors, coming to these islands every year without having to queue to board a flight, or deal with lost luggage. The whales had no anxiety about lost passports or forgetting to lock the front door.

  They moved on through the shifting light of the late afternoon, the small boat and the whales, each going their own way, each with an end goal in mind.

  Shoal cut the engine ten metres out from the shore of the Island of Saint Amoeba. She frowned at the dense jungle and white sand beach. “We really shouldn’t be doing this,” she warned.

  “I don’t have any choice. You can wait here if you want.” Ascott stood up and the boat rocked under his shifting weight.

  “I’m not letting you go there on your own. There’s man-eating turtles and mozzies that’ll suck you dry, meat-eating plants and ghosts.”

  “Ghosts?” Ascott tried to keep a straight face.

  “Yes, ghosts. Mostly of people who went on the island when they shouldn’t and ended up being eaten by the turtles, or drained of all their blood by the giant mozzies, or grabbed by the plants.”

  “What about the ones that got scared to death by the ghosts?” Ascott asked.

  Shoal scowled at him. “Them, too,” she said. “We should get ashore before nightfall.”

  “Is that when the ghosts come?” Ascott grinned.

  “Sure, laugh it up now, city boy, but you’ll be sorry when a turtle is nipping your bloodless toes while a trapdoor plant melts you and the ghosts come to steal your soul.” Shoal paddled the boat towards the narrow strip of pale sand. Ascott jumped out and ran a line and stake up the beach. Pressing the stick into the ground, he secured the boat against shifting tides.

  Ascott and Shoal gathered their supplies. Tacus, wrapped in his towel, settled in a milknut fibre bag that Shoal carried slung over her shoulder.

  “What are we looking for?” Shoal asked as they left the beach and climbed the low dunes into the dense jungle.

  “I have no idea,” Ascott admitted. “I hope we will know it when we find it, though.”

  As the sun set they climbed over rocks sculpted by wave-driven sand until they were as smooth as giant grey pearls and moved into the undergrowth. It was an alien world, as different from the water as outer space. Ferns rose from the ground, exploding in sprays of green leaves and tightly curled shoots that almost glowed with life. From the larger trees curtains of moss hung in waterfalls of green and yellow. There was no path that they could see, so they pushed their way through the overgrowth, climbing over fallen branches and stumbling through tangled knots of roots and vines that seemed to reach for their legs to drag them down into the soft mulch of the jungle floor.

  After half an hour of slogging through the dense foliage their legs were stinging from the scratches of branches. The sweat dripped from them both and they stopped to drink water from the canteen Palm had included in their picnic pack.

  “If we were looking for lots and lots of trees, I would say we are on the right track,” Shoal said.

  “There must be some sign. Can you remember anything that Tacus drew on his maps?” Ascott panted in the humid heat, occasionally slapping at insects that seemed drawn to the scent of warm human.

  “He drew some kind of shape with marks going around one side, and there was a blob at the end of the line. I think there were also some other marks—squiggles, mostly.”

  “When you say it like that, it makes me wonder if the map would be any use to us at all.”

  “If we knew which side of the map was north, we could look for a trail on the same side of the island as the squiggle,” Shoal said.

  “Let’s assume that the map is on a north—south orientation. So…that way would be north.” Ascott pointed into the jungle.

  “It’s that way,” Shoal said, shouldering her bag and walking off in a different direction. Ascott followed her without argument. They wandered through the dark jungle, torchlight standing in for the moon that hid behind the canopy.

  “What would the trail look like?” Shoal’s voice came from the gloom.

  “It would have grown over by now.” Ascott looked around from where he had been examining the trees for any scars or blaze marks.

  “So flat stones in a row wouldn’t be a sign?” Shoal asked.

  “What? Where?” Ascott pushed through a tangle of ferns to find Shoal studying the ground.

  “Flat stones,” Shoal said again. Her torch lit a path of rocks that led off in a winding trail through the brush and trees.

  “It cannot be that simple,” Ascott said.

  “Why not? Not everything in life has to be an insurmountable challenge.” Shoal stepped from stone to stone, almost skipping along the narrow path, Ascott on her heels. The path almost vanished several times where the jungle had reached out with green fingers
and brushed dirt and leaves over the stones. They followed the line of rock slabs to a wall of green.

  “There must be some great nutrients in the soil around here. This stuff is crazy,” Ascott panted in the moist heat.

  Shoal pulled at the matted branches and leaves. “We could try going around it,” she said.

  “With the jungle this dense around here, we may never find the path again.”

  Shoal sighed and wiped her hands on her shorts. “If Tacus still had feathers he could fly over the top and tell us where to go.”

  “A great idea.” Ascott opened Shoal’s satchel and lifted the bundled bird out. “Wake up, Tacus,” he said, rubbing the parrot gently on top of its head.

  “Five more minuteth,” Tacus mumbled, his head clamped under one ragged wing.

  “Come on, wake up! We need you to show us the way to the treasure,” Shoal said.

  Tacus’ head popped up and he peered at the close and whisp­ering jungle.

  “Where are we?” he squawked, his wings stretching and flapping to keep his balance.

  “The island of Saint Amoeba. You know, the place you draw all the time.”

  “Oh no! Get uth out of here! Quick! Run for your liveth!” Tacus flapped his wings desperately but couldn’t get any lift.

  “It’s okay, Tacus, no one else is here. It’s just you, me and Shoal. We’re perfectly safe.” A blood-curdling moan echoed through the foliage. The sound rose in pitch until it became the shrill whistling scream of someone being disembowelled with a dinner plate.

  “Catht off! Catht off!” Tacus shrieked. Shoal looked ready to take that advice but Ascott clamped the parrot’s beak shut.

  “Shhh…” he said.

  “Mggh Fhhgghh,” Tacus replied.

  “You wait here. I’ll see if I can find a way through…” Shoal forced her way into the curtain of ferns and tangled branches. In seconds she had disappeared from view.

  “Shoal?” Ascott struggled with Tacu,s who was trying to climb on to his head.

  “I’m he—!” Shoal’s reply broke off into a shrill scream.

  “Shoal!?” Ascott let Tacus go and plunged into the dense thicket after her. Tacus crouched on a path stone for a moment, listening to the chilling moan as it rose again, and then he trotted after Ascott.

  Chapter 17

  “Shoal?” Ascott crawled through clinging bushes and snarled knots of creeper and moss. “Shoal?”

  “Down here.” Her voice sounded oddly distant. “Can you see my torch?” A yellow beam of light played upwards through a buzzing cloud of insects and Ascott pushed his way towards it.

  “Are you okay?” he called, lying on his stomach and peering down into a rough hole in the ground.

  “I bruised my bum, but other than that I’m fine. You should come down. There’s a cave.”

  “Don’t you mean, “You should come up, there’s a cave’?” Ascott shone his torch into the hole. Shoal waved up at him, about twelve feet below.

  “It’s okay. I haven’t seen any snakes. Based on their size, I think the spiders probably ate them all,” she said.

  “Do we have any rope?” Ascott asked.

  “Mum packed for a picnic and a romantic night under the stars. Oysters we have, but I think rope was a bit adventurous, even for her.”

  Tacus hopped up Ascott’s back and teetered on his head, “Thoal?” he squawked.

  “I’m fine, Tacus, see? Now tell Ascott to come down.”

  Tacus stretched his wings and leaped. The aerodynamic profile of a bird without feathers bears a striking resemblance to that of a walrus. He screamed all the way down. Shoal caught him and cradled the trembling parrot against her shoulder.

  Ascott tucked the torch inside his shirt and slid feet-first over the edge. Gripping a gnarled tree root, he felt his way down the side of the hole.

  “We are supposed to follow the path,” Ascott said.

  Shoal shone her light around the narrow cavern. “Why? We don’t know where it leads, and this is more interesting.”

  With Shoal and Tacus leading the way, they headed down the stone passageway. The flag stones here were natural rock formations; water had flowed through the cave and left smooth steps of honey-coloured rock.

  From ahead came the low undulating moan rising a terrifying shriek, but this time they heard the surge of the sea underneath the cry.

  “Blowhole,” Shoal said.

  “Pardon?” Ascott blinked.

  “The sea pushes air up through holes in the rocks, and sometimes it makes noises. What we are hearing is a blowhole.”

  At the end of the stone passageway lay a round pool of water lit by the moonlight shining down through a circular hole in the roof. The surface of the pool glowed like silver and cast an eerie white light across the stone walls.

  “Bad plathe,” Tacus whined.

  Shoal stepped forward. Resting one hand on the smooth stone, she touched the surface of the pool. “It’s beautiful,” she whispered. Her voice echoed around the chamber, amplifying and repeating until a chorus of whispers spoke from every direction.

  The water rippled and rose up in a column from the centre of the pool. Shoal and Ascott stepped back, wondering if the ghostly wailing of the wave surge was responsible for the vortex reaching up through the perfect stream of moonlight. “Oh, ship,” Tacus muttered, and hid his head under his wing.

  The pillar of water refined itself into a human figure. A woman, with water flowing over her features, and her lower half skirted in a flowing tide of silver liquid.

  Her watery gaze fell upon them and moist lips parted. “Hello,” she said in the voice of water flowing into a teacup.

  “He—Hello,” Ascott replied. Shoal stood silent, her eyes wide with amazement and a wide grin spreading across her face.

  “I have nothing for you. Nothing, for such a very long time,” the water woman said, tears falling from her cheeks like the first drops of spring rain.

  “We…we came looking for the treasure,” Ascott said, unsure how else to explain the intrusion.

  “All gone, many, many tides ago. This was once the source of it all. Now, it is a place of memory and sorrow.” The water woman stroked the surface of the pool with her glistening fingertips, sending patterns of light swirling through the water.

  “Who took the treasure? What was it? Where did they take it?” The questions tumbled from Ascott, his mind a blur with the desperate need to know.

  “Men, like you. It was everything, the source. That from which all things flow, the Pisces of Fate. They did not take it far. My power was still something then, and the hurricane that came down upon them destroyed their wooden ship. Where they went from there, I could not follow.”

  “Are you really her?” Shoal asked.

  “I am She,” the water woman replied.

  “She, The Lady of The Sea,” Shoal said to Ascott. “Sailors and fishers make offerings to her before going out.”

  “Really? She is real?”

  “She is She,” Shoal said.

  “Are you a god?” Ascott asked the wet woman.

  “I am the personification of a desire. The thought made real. Why do you look so uncertain? You are more wondrous than I. You who are born of the stars.”

  “Hardly,” Ascott said. “My parents were just normal people, with jobs and a mortgage.”

  “We followed a treasure map. It led us here,” Shoal said.

  “The treasure is gone.” The flow of water down the woman’s cheeks may have been due to tears, or the fluid nature of her form.

  “Yes, you said that it was not taken far. Any more clues?”

  “The treasure still lies within these waters. It can be found. But be warned, if you seek it, you must be prepared to find it.”

  “Well, of course we are prepared to find it, that’s why we�
��re looking for it,” Ascott said in a sharper tone than he intended.

  “Thank you!” Shoal called as the lady of the sea began to sink into the silver lit pool.

  “This water is still blessed,” the lady said. “Your friend may be restored.” She vanished, her face spreading and sinking in a final ripple.

  “What friend?” Ascott said to the still water.

  “I think she means Tacus,” Shoal replied. “Legend says the waters where She appears can heal the sick and injured.”

  “Worth a shot, I suppose,” Ascott shrugged, and stroked Tacus on the back of his plucked neck. “Tacus, bath time.”

  “Than’t,” Tacus said, his voice muffled under his wing.

  “Come on, just a little splash,” Ascott knelt down and extended his arm out over the water with Tacus nested in his palm.

  “Than’t!” Tacus squawked and in a fluttering scramble he ran up Ascott’s arm and flapped on his shoulder.

  Shoal grabbed the bird and held him firmly in both hands. “Take a breath,” she warned.

  “Don’t wanna,” Tacus croaked. Shoal shrugged and stepped to the edge of the water. With the grace of one who spends their time balancing on wave-tossed boats she crouched and plunged the shrieking parrot into the pool. A stream of bubbles erupted from the water. Shoal swished Tacus back and forth for a few seconds and then pulled him out.

  “Bath!” the bird howled in anguish. “Baaaath!”

  “Oh, you big chicken,” Shoal said. Tacus’ beak snapped shut and he regarded her with a cold eye.

  “Chicken?” he asked. “Chicken?” his voice rose in incredulous anger. “I, madam, am no chicken!” Tacus shook his body like a wet dog, drops of water spraying everywhere.

  “Look at his feathers,” Ascott said in shock. As Tacus preened himself with what little dignity he could muster, rainbow shades of plumage swelled from his quivering body and in moments stood out in their full previous glory.

  Shoal squealed in delight. “Tacus! Your feathers have grown back!”

  Tacus flapped and stretched his wings, inspecting each feather in turn. He seemed satisfied that nothing was out of place.